Category Archives: history

Languages

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I am proud to say that I passed three out of four semesters of college French courses.

That means I am, or once was, somewhat fluent in TWO more languages than our most recent former president uses.

The latest nonsense to cascade in a disorderly tumble from his lips adds an additional damnation to immigrants who, he has claimed, “are coming from jails, and they’re coming from prisons, and they’re coming from mental institutions, and they’re coming from insane asylums, and they’re terrorists.”

Of course, he never offers any proof of such things.  Now, during that same visit to an area near Eagle Pass, Texas on the southern border, he is piling on:

“Nobody can explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages. We have languages coming into our country. We have nobody that even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them, and they’re pouring into our country, and they’re bringing with them tremendous problems, including medical problems, as you know.”  He has asserted in a previous rant that when one migrant showed u, “We don’t even have one translator who could understand this language.”

Various media outlets, including the once-chummy FOX News Channel,  jumped all over that disjointed estrangement from reality, one of the fact-checkers being CNN’s Daniel Dale who found the comment about a translator, “nonsense,” and said it had been “conjured out of thin air.”

The former president says people such as Dale shouldn’t taken him so seriously. He told Sean Hannity recently, “You take a look at when I use Barack Hussein Obama and I interject him into where it’s supposed to be Biden, and I do it purposely for comedic reasons and for sarcasm.”

Whew!   That’s a relief.  I hope all of his MAGA friends realize he’s just pulling their legs and don’t bother repeating his fun-loving remarks as serious messages.

About those languages that nobody speaks:

Analyst Philip Bump with The Washington Post wrote last week that the former president’s remarks were “remarkable” and proved again that “there is no limit on the fearmongering Donald Trump will deploy when it comes to the U.S.-Mexican border.”

Bump points out that there’s a CIA database that includes the spoken languages of more than 220 places.  Here’s an interesting statistic he cites from that database:  Canada, which has two official languages (English and French) “has a higher percentage of English speakers than the United States has of people who speak only the language.”  He says only about seven percent of our population speaks something other than English or Spanish.

Bu contrast, about 30% of Canadians speak French. About 16% of Canadians use both languages.  Four percent speak Chinese. Three percent speak Spanish with an equal amount speaking Punjabi. Arabic, Tagalog, and Italian are spoken by two percent each.

The truth, he says, is that “fewer people speak less frequently-spoken languages. Therefore, those people are less likely to arrive at the U.S.-Mexican border. If they did so, though, there seem to be good odds that someone within the federal government (much less the broader population would be able to understand what they’re saying.”

On top of that, the State Department has translators in some 140 languages or combinations of languages. “The CIA, meanwhile, has an incentive program to encourage people who speak particular languages to work with them. If you speak Baluchi (spoken in Oman) or Ewe (Togo and Ghana) or Lingala (both Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo), ping your local CIA recruiter. There’s cash in it for you.”

As far as immigrants being criminals or more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans—as the ex-President claimed in his Texas speech, Terry Collins wrote this week in USA Today that research indicates immigrants “actually commit fewer crimes than people born in the U. S.”

Trump and his supporters are quick to capitalize on a serious crime committed by an undocumented immigrant, such as the high-profile murder in Georgia.

But Collins points to the work of immigration policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh with the Cato Institute, a self-described “Libertarian think tank,” who says, ‘The findings show pretty consistently undocumented and illegal immigrants have a lower conviction rate and are less likely to be convicted of homicide and other crimes overall compared to native-born Americans in Texas.”

“They’re coming from jails and they’re coming from prisons and they’re coming from mental institutions and they’re coming from insane asylums and they’re terrorists,” Trump said in Eagle Pass.

He clearly has never heard of Nowrasteh, whose studies of undocumented immigrants from 2012-2022 show undocumented immigrants have a homicide rate fourteen percent under that of native-born citizens and a 41% lower total conviction rate. Legal immigrants have a 62% lower homicide rate

He told Collins, “I don’t think that Trump’s statements accurately convey the reality of immigration.”

The problem with all of this is that a lot of Americans are buying what the ex-president is selling.  The Pew Research Center, in a survey a few weeks ago, found that 57% of Americans think immigration leads to more crime.

Here’s some more research reported by Collins:

Stanford University Economics Professor Ran Abramitzky’s research shows the rates of crimes committed by immigrants in this country have been lower than those committed by native-born Americans. Incarceration rates have been dropping for the last six decades.  Nowrasteh says there’s a powerful reason for that: “Deportation is a hefty penalty, as being removed and sent back to their home country where they have fewer job and quality of life opportunities is enough to scare most immigrants.”

As far as criminals crossing the border in droves—-

The Border Patrol checks for criminal backgrounds before releasing them to enter this country, pending a hearing. The Patrol arrested more than 15,000 people with criminal records at the border last year, three-thousand more than in ’22.  So far this year, the number is more than 5,600.

Responsible people who know what they are talking about know that our border is not a sieve that leaks insane criminals who have been released from prisons throughout the world to come here and “poison” our country. It is not to our credit that we would listen to an irresponsible monolingual figure who hopes we drink HIS poison instead.

A Wagnerian, Arthurian Campaign 

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Watched the State of the Union address last week.  Have watched several events featuring the other guy lately.

The day after the State of the Union address, while others were analyzing the speech, I found myself looking at the battle ahead and Wagnerian music began to play in my mind.

And images.

Listen as you read:

(5) Wagner Götterdämmerung – Siegfried’s death and Funeral march Klaus Tennstedt London Philharmonic – YouTube

A chill late evening on an ancient battlefield, smoke and fog intermingling to turn the setting sun a deep orange in the aftermath of an epic life-and-death confrontation between two legendary opponents.. Think of Arthur and Mordred from medieval England.

The State of the Union address was one of them drawing the sword that is a traditional symbol of power, of justice, of the best interests of the people and throwing away the scabbard to enter the final struggle with one whom he sees as a brooding, vengeful foe seeking to destroy everything good and honorable; a rival of equally waning strength, knowing this is his last, desperate chance to prevail.

In Arthurian legend, Arthur and, Mordred, variously referred to in the tellings of the tale as Arthur’s traitorous nephew or the traitorous son of Arthur’s nephew Gawain, or Arthur’s bastard son born of Arthur’s relationship with his half-sister (and there are other descriptions). They are two of the few survivors of the Battle of Camlann. Arthur, seeking to regain the throne Mordred had seized in his absence, impales Mordred on a spear.  But Mordred uses the last of his waning energy to pull himself along the spear and strikes Arthur with a mortal blow to the head.

Arthur, knowing his end is near, commands Bedivere to throw the great sword, Excalibur, into a nearby lake, which Bedivere finally does, reluctantly. He sees a hand part the waters, catch the sword, shake it three times, and pull it beneath the quiet waters of the pool.

(The climactic last scene, accompanied by Wagner’s “Death and Funeral” music from Gotterdammerung, was used in the concluding scenes of the 1981 movie “Excalibur,” considered one of the greatest Arthur legend films ever made. In the movie, Percival rather than Bedivere throws the sword.

(5) Excalibur – Finale – YouTube)

Arthur’s body is buried later at Glastonbury. His former ally, Launcelot, returned from France, learned that Guenevere had become a nun, went to Glastonbury to hear the story of Arthur’s final battle, and became a monk.

Six years later, after Guenevere had died, he and other surviving Knights of the Round Table went to Almesbury to take her remains to Glastonbury to be interred next to Arthur.

So it is told in one of the many versions of the Arthur legend.

Will this battle in future decades be seen as Arthurian as the English legend describes the final battle between Arthur and Mordred, between good and evil? Will, in the end, we be left with the thought neither survived (politically) but the kingdom endured?

(screen shots are from the motion picture Excalibur, produced by Orion Pictures)

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(Perhaps these thoughts have some distant genetic origin.  Glastonbury is about ten miles from the ancient lead-mining community of Priddy, England. The patron saint of Glastonbury is Joseph of Arimathea, perhaps an uncle of Jesus, and a tin trader who took a young Jesus with him during Jesus’ “lost years” when Joseph was involved in the tin trade with pre-Roman England. Local legend in Priddy has it that a young Jesus, traveling with Joseph, also visited Priddy.

The Gospels, of course, identify Joseph of Arimathea as the person who got permission to remove Jesus’s body form the cross and to place it in his personal tomb.)

The County, The Man  

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One of our counties is named for a man who was the nation’s fifth Chief Justice of the United States.  Before that, he was the 12th man to be Secretary of the Treasury. Before that, he was the 11th United States Attorney General.

We pronounce the name of the county “Tainey.”  But his name was really pronounced “Tawney.”   Roger Brooke Taney represents the dual nature of history and the fame and the infamy that comes from it, a duality that we cannot escape and from which we must not hide.

This man who is best remembered for delivering a historic anti-freedom decision in 1857 was part of the court that ruled on a historic pro-freedom case in 1841.

The Amistad case involved Africans who broke free and seized their ship, eventually landing at Long Island.  The owners of the ship sued for recovery of their property—the ship and its cargo. Former President John Quincy Adams argued for the slaves and the court ruled 6-1 with Taney in the majority that the slaves belonged to no one and were therefore free because, “in no sense could they possibly intend to import themselves here, as slaves, or for sale as slaves.”

The point of slave law ruled upon by the Taney court sixteen years later was entirely different. Taney is best remembered for delivering the decision that denied freedom to Missouri slave Dred Scott.

Missouri courts had handled hundreds of “freedom suits” filed by slaves who claimed they had gained their freedom because their owners had taken them to free states before coming to slaveholding Missouri. Some 300 of those cases were filed in St. Louis where a monument now stands honoring those slaves. Many of the suits succeeded but they ended with the Scott case.

The case was heard twice by the U. S. Supreme Court, a second hearing held because, as Taney wrote in the final decision, “differences of opinion were found to exist among the members of the court; and as the questions in controversy are of the highest importance…it was deemed advisable to continue the case, and direct a re-argument on some of the points, in order that we might have an opportunity of giving to the whole subject a more deliberate consideration.”

You can read the entire decision at Dred Scott v. Sandford Full Text – Text of the Case – Owl Eyes

The court voted 7-2 that Scott, as a slave, had no constitutional right to sue for his freedom. It is a long, long decision written by Taney and announced on March 6, 1857.

“The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution,” Taney wrote the long opinion that includes:

The words ‘people of the United States’ and ‘citizens’ are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing..,The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”

…The legislation of the States therefore shows, in a manner not to be mistaken, the inferior and subject condition of that race at the time the Constitution was adopted, and long afterwards, throughout the thirteen States by which that instrument was framed; and it is hardly consistent with the respect due to these States, to suppose that they regarded at that time, as fellow-citizens and members of the sovereignty, a class of beings whom they had thus stigmatized; whom, as we are bound, out of respect to the State sovereignties, to assume they had deemed it just and necessary thus to stigmatize, and upon whom they had impressed such deep and enduring marks of inferiority and degradation; or, that when they met in convention to form the Constitution, they looked upon them as a portion of their constituents, or designed to include them in the provisions so carefully inserted for the security and protection of the liberties and rights of their citizens…

 Upon the whole, therefore, it is the judgment of this court, that it appears by the record before us that the plaintiff in error is not a citizen of Missouri, in the sense in which that word is used in the Constitution; and that the Circuit Court of the United States, for that reason, had no jurisdiction in the case, and could give no judgment in it. Its judgment for the defendant must, consequently, be reversed, and a mandate issued, directing the suit to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

The opinion fueled fears of those who felt the slave economy eventually would collapse that the opposite would happen if the institution were to spread into new territories to the west. The 1821 Missouri Compromise forbade that but Taney’s ruling threw out that compromise:

“Every citizen has a right to take with him into the Territory any article of property which the Constitution of the United States recognises as property.”

It has been called the worst Supreme Court ruling in our history and a direct contributor to the Civil War.

Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had eyes on a presidential run in 1860, told a crowd at the Illinois Capitol that those who disagreed with the ruling were “enemies of the constitution. One of his listeners was Springfield lawyer Abraham Lincoln, who had his eyes on Douglas’ seat in the Senate. One of Lincoln’s newest biographers, Steve Inskeep, wrote that Lincoln responded two weeks later that Douglas “dreads the slightest restraints on the spread of slavery” and asserted that the decision did not “establish a settled doctrine for the country.” Inskeep says Lincoln felt the Scott case was more than a bad ruling; “It was part of a conspiracy to spread slavery everywhere.”

The next June, Lincoln told another meeting in the statehouse, the conflict over slavery had not been resolved.

“A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.”

The Lincoln-Douglas debates that came afterward elevated Lincoln to the national spotlight and in 1860 into the presidency.

Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, just two days short of the fourth anniversary of the Scott case, showed how rapidly the decision had changed the nation. It began with a dramatic moment when the tall, young abolitionist president-elect, in his first public appearance with a beard, filed in “arm in arm” with the Chief Justice who would swear him in.  Roger Taney, days short of his 84th birthday, “looked very agitated and his hands shook very perceptively with emotion,” as one reporter put it, as Lincoln placed his large hand on the Bible and took an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

We do not know if the walk “arm in arm” or Taney’s shaking hands were matters of emotion or of the infirmities of age.  He died a little more than three years later, having witnessed the imposition of the Emancipation Proclamation that declared slaves in southern states were free, and, six months before his death, the passage by the United States Senate of what would become the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude.

On March 6, 2017, the sixtieth anniversary of the decision, descendants of the Taneys and the Scotts met at the Maryland State Capitol, where a statue of Taney stood, for a ceremony of reconciliation. Charlie Taney, great-great-great grand nephew of the judge, acknowledged, “I’m sure he wouldn’t be happy with this,”  but continued, “There’s totally something about seeing the Scotts and the Taneys side by side working together on reconciliation that strikes a real chord in people.”

Another descendant, Kate Taney Billingsley, said, there had been mixed feelings in the family about Taney: “A lot of people, it was like, they were proud of the name because it was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for other rulings he had made that was not the Dred Scott decision, and yet everybody agreed that it was a complete smear on our name and it was a terrible, terrible decision.”

On the other side was Lynn Jackson, the great-great-granddaughter of Dred Scott, who runs the Dred Scott Foundation of St. Louis, who hoped the event could foster something bigger. “It’s an open door for us to say if the Scotts and the Taneys can reconcile, can’t you?” she asked. “If you look at relationships in our nation, these are supposed to be the two who are really supposed to hate each other. But it’s not about hatred, it’s about understanding, and then relationship building and trust.”

There had been discussions about removing Taney’s statue from the Maryland Capitol grounds at the time but the families opposed it.  They suggested it would be more appropriate to put up a statue of Scott and one of Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery in Maryland and became a national abolitionist leader.

It wasn’t to be.  The state removed Taney’s statue in 2017, two days after Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh ordered removal of a replica of the statue from city property.

In December of 2022, the United States House of Representatives completed the process of ordering the removal of a bust of Taney from the old House Chamber that was used by the Supreme Court until its own building was constructed.  Maryland Congressman Stenny Hoyer, who noted that every day he served in a chamber that had been built by slaves, said, “While we cannot remove the stones and bricks that were placed here in bondage, we can ensure that the moveable pieces of art we display here celebrate freedom, not slavery, not sedition, not segregation….”His narrow-minded originalist philosophy failed to acknowledge America’s capacity for moral growth and for progress. Indeed, the genius of our Constitution is that it did have moral growth, it did have expanded vision, it did have greater wisdom. Taney’s ruling denied Black Americans citizenship, upheld slavery, and contributed, frankly, to the outbreak of the Civil War.”

The bust was removed on February 9, 2023 and replaced by a bust of Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights attorney who played a key role in the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that ended segregated schools in America, and later the first black member of the U. S. Supreme Court.

Taney County, Missouri was carved out of Wayne County by the state legislature in 1835, the year that Andrew Jackson appointed Taney to succeed Chief Justice John Marshall, who had died earlier that year.  Taney’s nomination was confirmed in 1836, making him the first Catholic to serve on the court. Taney County was formally recognized as an organized county in 1837, almost twenty years before the ruling that became the deciding “smear” on his record and on his descendants’ name.

In advocating for the removal of the Taney bust from the national capital, Congressman Stenny Hoyer noted the duality of history when he said, “We ought to know who Roger Brooke Taney was, a man who was greatly admired in his time in the state of Maryland. But he was wrong. Over 3 million people visit our Capitol each year. The people we choose to honor in our halls signal to those visitors which principles we cherish as a nation.”

There are no known statues of Taney in Taney County and there has been no overt move to change the name of the county. The name honors the distinguished public servant that he was, not the jurist who wrote one opinion that overshadows everything else he wrote or was.

Taney, the man, is a reminder of something else said by the man he swore in as President of the United States when he delivered his annual message to Congress late in 1862:

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

Sometimes words cross all barriers of time. Taney’s words. Lincoln’s words. Words of yesterday become words of today. It is up to us to decide what to do with them.

(Photo credits: National Judicial College, Library of Congress)

 

BONUS:  SCOTUS SAYS TRUMP CAN STAY; MISSOURI PRECEDENT

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We interrupt today’s regular entry to bring you this perspective on the big news of the morning, so far:

The United States Supreme Court today unanimously ruled that Colorado cannot keep Donald Trump off its presidential primary ballot. All nine judges wrote separate opinions explaining why states cannot determine who will run in national elections based on Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment, which Colorado and some other states had cited to kick Trump off the ballot for taking part in an insurrection.

The Supreme Court says the authority to enforce that section that bars those involved in insurrections from holding office rests with Congress, not the states.

Would Congress do that?  Some of those disappointed in today’s ruling say a Congress that works the way a Congress is supposed to work would be far more likely to do it than today’s dysfunctional bunch.

Today’s ruling has a Missouri precedent, sort of.

In the early 1990s, when Missouri and 22 other states made the mistake of enacting term limits on members of their legislatures, an effort also was made to limit the amount of time members of Congress could serve. The Arkansas Supreme Court threw out the law in that state and U. S. Term Limits took the case to the Supremes, where justices voted 5-4 in 1995 that the requirements for service in the United States House and the United States Senate are established in the U. S. Constitution which trumps state laws or state constitutions.

The advice  

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It seems so pure.  But its truth, spoken 250 years ago, is an ideal too seldom sought and even less seldom in today’s politics, achieved.

The great British statesman Edmund Burke spoke to the electors of Bristol on November 3, 1774 of the responsibilities of those in elective positions who represent a people. In his remarks, he dismisses those who say only that they represent the will of the voters of their district. But he also is dismissive of those who become renegades within the system who focus only one their wishes and interests.

The language is more Shakesearean than contemporary political rhetoric, of course.  But the message is clear and one part of this speech is especially meaningful. C0onsider it advice to those who serve us:

I am sorry I cannot conclude without saying a word on a topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I wish that topic had been passed by at a time when I have so little leisure to discuss it. But since he has thought proper to throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor sentiments on that subject.

He tells you that “the topic of instructions has occasioned much altercation and uneasiness in this city;” and he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly) in favour of the coercive authority of such instructions.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,–these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for.

You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for.

Substitute “legislature” or “congress” for “parliament,” and it seems from here that this advice is timeless and needs to be understood and heeded by those we send to represent us. But we also should acknowledge that we have a responsibilies, too, as Burke pointed out. There is no escaping our responsibility to send the best people to represent our best interests.

And if they fail us, it is our responsibility to replace them with those won’t.  That, of course, requires us to pay attention to what they do and requires them to report to us with “a respectful frankness.”  The times demand more of us than we have been giving. If we are to expect for from them we must expect more from ourselves.

(Photo credit: American Enterprise Institute)

Jean

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We liked Jean Carnahan at our house.  She was never at our house but we were at her house a few times when she and Mel were governor and first lady.

Jean died last Tuesday after 90 years of a life well-lived. And shared.

We always think of them as “real” people, the same folks when dressed in their government clothes in Jefferson City for a few years that they were in their farm clothes back home in Rolla many more years than that. Not all first-couples have that quality.

She several times talked with me about the book she was writing about the history of the Governor’s Mansion and I cherish the two signed copies of If Walls Could Talk that are on the bookshelf in our living room. She wrote several others after her time in Washington.

In all my career as a reporter, I kept those I covered at least at arm’s length.  The Carnahan’s, especially Jean, I allowed as close as my wrist because of that “real people” quality. When she was appointed to the U. S. Senate, I told her that our relationship would have to change because she now was only a news source. She seemed disappointed.  I was not pleased to have to tell her that.

A personal story—

Mel got his pilot’s license and one evening he showed up at the Columbia airport to get some flight time on the way to a campaign meeting in St. Louis.  He needed someone to fly to Hermann with him who could fly the plane back to Columbia while he, Jean, and their Highway Patrol escort went on to St. Louis.  The young flight instructor on duty at the time was our son, Rob, who flew to Hermann with the governor.

The plane’s engine would not re-start after they landed so the Carnahans invited Rob to join them for dinner at a German restaurant they liked in downtown Hermann.  So there was Robb, a kid trying to pile up enough flying hours to get a job flying cargo somewhere, having an unexpected dinner with the first family of Missouri.  By the time they were finished, the plane’s engine had cooled enough that it could start and the group parted ways.

The news of the fatal crash in October,  2000 hit our son hard, as you might expect. The day that the governor’s casket was in the great hallway of the governor’s mansion so the public could pay tribute, Jean came down the grand stairway and went outside to greet the office staff that had come over from the Capitol.  When she came back in, she noticed me standing in the library just off the great hall.  She came over and hugged me and said, “We’re so glad we got to know your son.”

It took a little time to resume the role of the stoic reporter just coverina a story. But that was Jean.

This great lady, burdened by terrible loss of her husband and one of her sons with incredible dignity, thought at that time of that evening in Hermann with a kid flight instructor.

Rob flies for Southwest Airlines today but that dinner with the Carnahans is one of the most memorable experiences of his life. But, that was just Mel and Jean being Mel and Jean.

Her official portrait in the Executive Mansion captures part of her nature.  The group that works to preserve the mansion says her outfit honors working women by wearing the kind of professional dress working women would wear. She is holding the flower that blooms on the Dogwood, our state tree. She later wrote on her Facebook page, “I always thought a computer keyboard would have been a more appropriate depiction.”  Jean computerized the mansion by setting up a website and creating a database for all of the assets of the old house.

The Carnahans had a good time in the mansion and especially enjoyed visits from children. They started the annual Halloween Spooktacular highlighted by Mel dressed as Dracula and appearing from a window on the second floor. She held a Children’s Hour at the Mansion and they had Easter egg hunts each year. A fountain created by Jamie Anderson was installed near the front porch to celebrate the mansion’s 125th anniversary commemorates children’s health.

She wrote on her Facebook page after the 2019 visit, “I recall my vision for the sculpture came from seeing an old photo of children playing in the abandoned fountain, that was placed on the lawn more than a 100 years ago. In today’s fountain, the girl atop the basin, her toes barely entering the water, is reminiscent of the shortened life of 9-year-old Carrie Crittenden, who died at the mansion of diphtheria. Her presence is a vivid reminder of the health care needs of children today.

“The African-American boy is inspired by the youngster, who once stayed in the Mansion barn. As he reaches out to grasp the flowing water, he denotes opportunity for all children. The other boy, modeled after my grandson, stands against a backdrop of leaves, birds, and fish, reminding the viewer of our need to protect the environment for future generations to enjoy.”

She paid her last visit (as far as I know) to the mansion in 2019 (shown here with First Lady Teresa Parson standing on the grand staircase under the official portrait of former first lady Maggie Stephens, described by Jean as “one of the flamboyant and benevolent residents of the old home.”)

When the Carnahan administration began, Jean and Mel decided the governor’s office need to be refreshed for the first time since the Hearnes administration moved into what originally was a big waiting room for people seeking meetings with the governor. As Betty Hearnes had supervised that makeover, Jean Carnahan supervised the update.  Furniture was repaired and some stored items were returned. The ceiling was repainted with the state seal included—Mel was given the brush and painted the last start, now known as the “Carnahan Star” in the ceiling seal—and the worn carpet with the state seal in it was replaced with a lighter carpet with the state flower in it so visitors wouldn’t walk on the seal.  She had the seal framed and it decorated a wall in her Washington office and, I was told, became part of the decoration of son Russ’s office while he was a member of the U.S. House.

She became the first woman U.S. Senator from Missouri when Governor Wilson appointed her to serve in Mel’s place after he had been elected posthumously.  She was the same kind of Senator-person as she had been here in Missouri.  Thoughtful.  Quiet.  Effective.  Disappointed when she lost to Jim Talent in 2002 but still always looking for things to do, people to know, adventures to be had.

My wife, Nancy, always enjoyed Jean’s restaurant critiques and other comments she posted on social media after she resumed private life in St. Louis.

We have now within a span of weeks lost two special former first ladies, Betty Hearnes and Jean Carnahan, who were as comfortable to be around in the mansion as they were when they were around the folks at home. They might have seen themselves as ordinary people who lived in extraordinary circumstances and they never outgrew that  understanding of themselves.

The life well-lived.  We all want that at the end, don’t we?  They had it.

(Photo credit: Carnahan family, Jefferson City News-Tribune, Missouri Mansion Preservation, Jean’s Facebook page)

The Illiterate

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Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has been getting a bad rap.

Comparatively speaking, at least.

She’s been slammed for her fumbled answer to a question about the causes of the Civil War, saying it “was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do.” Later, at another town hall meeting, she tried to do some damage control by saying  slavery was “a very talked about thing” as she grew up in the South. “I was thinking past slavery and talking about the lesson that we could learn going forward. I shouldn’t have done that.”

But Haley sounded like an honors graduate from Harvard, a Rhodes Schlolar,  and a Nobel Laureate in History compared to our former president’s comments about the Civil War while campaigning in Iowa:

The Civil War was so fascinating. So horrible, was so horrible but so fascinating. It was, I don’t know, it was just different.  I just find it—I’m so attracted to seeing it. So many mistakes were made.  See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died, so many people died, you know.  That was a disaster. If you got hit by a bullet in the leg you were essentially going to die or lose the leg. That’s why you had so many people, no legs, no arms, if you got hit in the arm or the leg it meant that you were up because the infection, gangrene, it was just such a, you know, sort of a horrible time.  But that’s. I was thinking to myself because I was reading something and I said this is something that could have been negotiated, you know, and it was just for all those people to die and they died viciously. That was a vicious, vicious war, and in many ways—look they’re all this, there is nothing nice about it. But boy, was that a tough one for our country. But I think it’s, you know, Abraham Lincoln.  If you could have negotiated it, you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was. He would have been president but he would have been president. He wouldn’t have been the, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln would have been different. But that would have been okay. It’s, it would have been a thing and that I know very well.  I know the whole process that they went through and they just couldn’t get along and that would have been something that could have been negotiated and they wouldn’t have had that problem. But it was, it was a hell of a time.  

“A tough one for our country…..a hell of a time.”

Good Lord!

I haven’t read anything so stunningly ignorant since I took an essay test in the seventh grade on a chapter in a social studies book I had neglected to read during the previous week.

Negotiate?  Forty years of negotiation after the Missouri Compromise (does he have any idea what that was?) didn’t prevent it. Yes, it was a tough one for our country.  But it ended slavery, which the blithering former president failed to mention, assuming he can perceive and recall any educated discussion of it.

He did mention Abraham Lincoln, although disparagingly, but what would your expect from him?.

Trump’s lack of interest in reading, even detailed security reports during his presidency, is beyond legendary. Every time we watch him deliver a cringe-producing message from a teleprompter we wonder if he can read.  He clearly hasn’t mastered an art first proclaimed by that great American philosopher, George Burns—“Sincerity, if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

He is known to read things about himself.  But to expect him to know anything about the Civil War, the writers of the Constitution, the meaning of the Declaration of Independence—–not a chance.  He wouldn’t know the significance of Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and imaginining him reading out loud anything from Shakespeare to song lyrics from Le Miz invokes near-terror.

That’s why we get gibberish on almost any subject—-and for some reason there are people who think his brand of universal illiteracy should be the template for the American mentality.

When the Civil War is boiled down to a discourse on missing arms and legs while he claims to “know the whole process that they went through,” there is no ignoring the fact that this “stable genius” is an intellectual empty vessel who enjoys his own internal cranial echoes.

Is our former president really the best the party of Lincoln, can negotiate?

Notes From a Quiet Street (Injured Curmudgeon Edition)

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(being an irregular voyage through some mental flotsam and jetsam that isn’t worth full blogness)

There is so much to writr about these days but unfortunately your constant observer has become a one-fingr typist because was not observant when he went to the mailbox Thursday night and tripped over a little sidewalk wall and found himself in aencounter with a garage door.  The door is fine but the left shoulder of your observer became removed from its socket, said left arm now tightly strapped down.

But I do want anyone in the area to know that on tuesda morning thru Wednesday afternoon I have attanged evhibits from the Steamboat Arabia Museum in KC and National TransportationMuseum in Kirkwood to be in the capitol rotunda to promote legislation to help veterans, provide financial aid to struggling local historical museums, krrp the Arabia in Missouri and help the NMOT achieve its dreams for expansion and protection for and restoration of its collection.

Now onto the original great observations about our times—-

Anybody else getting tired of emails or telephone calls from people wanting to know if your experience with your doctor, your mechanic, your financial advisor, your car salesman, your—-you name it—was a pleasant one?

Feedback Mania has taken hold.

It seems as if every time I go someplace I get an email request almost before I’m out the door wondering if I had a pleasant experience, if the office staff was friendly, or if I would recommend this to others.

Did you enjoy your colonoscopy?  Was the admissions staff chipper enough?  How was the taste of the gallon of stuff you drank?  Was your experience with the drug administered before insertion pleasant?

I’m thinking of saving all of these surveys until I can fill them out while I’m on hold after an impersonal, recorded voice tells me that my call is important.

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I had a dream the other night that I opened my closet door and the only things inside were hangers with t-shirts proclaiming that I had saved a shivering dog or an elephant, that I had helped a school kid get a meal, another kid get healed from a disease (I slept under about three adorable blankets during the night)—you know.

I had bankrupted myself at the rate of $19.95 a month for so many different wonderful causes. In my dream, I decided to go on TV and promise viewers that I would give them a t-shirt that said, “I saved Bob” if they just sent me $19.95 a month.  The t-shirt would cost me 75 cents from the sweatshop in China. I needed the money because I placed a telephone call to see if a Medicare plan was available for me in my zip code and I needed to enroll.

Then I woke up and felt badly because each of these charities is only trying to do good in its small part of the human experience.  All except for the Medicare guy.

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Speaking of insurance:  Can you imagine if Flo and Doug had a child?

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Here is something that is spooky as all get-out:

A few days ago my friend Steve Mays, who was our webmaster at the Missourinet for many years and did great and creative things while some of us sluggards refused to quit living in our  internet caves, was explaining ChatGPT to me.  As I understand it, it’s an artificial intelligence program that lets people feed some information in and the program spits out a theme, a letter, an article, or whatever in whatever format or language or length the user wants.  People talk to it on their cell phones.

Later that day he asked Chat GPT:

Do you have any information about reporting by a man named Bob Priddy?

ChatGPT

Bob Priddy, a renowned journalist in Missouri, retired after a notable 40-year career. He was known for his dedication to government transparency and his critical view on the state of statehouse reporting, especially concerning the decline in media presence and the increasing influence of lobbyists. Priddy also played a significant role in advocating for open government, such as pushing for cameras in judicial chambers. However, he expressed concerns about the worsening state of government transparency in Missouri. His career has been a testament to committed journalism, focusing on impactful stories and the importance of government accountability​​.

As complimentary as it was, I was, and am, a little bit chilled that some lights and wires in a box can churn out something like this about me.

I looked up ChatGPT on Wikipedia.  I wonder who—or what—wrote the article.

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Saw a discussion a few days ago about whether Iowa Hawkeyes’ greatest basketball player should go pro or stay in college. One of the questions is whether Caitlin Clark would take a financial cut if she did.  One sports site, Firstsportz, estimates her net worth already is three-million dollars because of the endorsements of various products and services while in college.

At least Clark has stayed at one school throughout her career instead of being a jock gypsy, as so many athletes have become.

Are we alone in thinking there’s something basically wrong with college sports today?  I doubt it.

Uncertainty

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I want to talk to you today about my greatest hero and about his life and his times which resonate in these uncertain days.

I want to tell you about helping George Clooney make a movie.  But Clooney, whose work I admire, is not the hero of this story.

Back about 2005, I was wrapping up my second chairmanship of my profession’s national organization, the Radio-Television News Directors Association (now the Radio Television Digital News Association) when George Clooney’s production company reached out to us to help with some information about Edward R. Murrow.  I also was the organization’s historian so the response fell to me.

Edward R. Murrow was, and is, my hero. To be involved, even in such a minor way as I was in producing an Oscar-nominated Murrow movie produced by George Clooney—who can be as serious as a heart attack in his work although many of his movies are light-hearted—is one of the most important distinctions I have gathered.

Murrow had given his greatest speech at our convention in 1958, three months after See It Now was killed by CBS boss William S. Paley. It’s known as the “wires and lights in a box” speech.  It’s also considered his professional suicide speech because he was critical of the early network television news decisions as he warned: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box….”

Here’s the entire speech, should you choose to listen, from our convention more than 65 years ago:

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I provided the background information and a copy of the organiztion’s 1958 logo for the opening and closing segments of the movie.  You won’t see my name or that of RTNDA in any of the credits, but that was my contribution. I am not bothered by the omission. It was, after all, a minuscule part of the story.

When the movie came out, RTNDA had a reception in Washington where Clooney, Strathairn, and Grant Heslov (who played a young Don Hewitt, the creator of Sixty Minutes), attended.  I have a signed movie poster in my loft office.

Seventy-one years ago, he said:

“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty–if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox–if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.”

McCarthyism was ramping up in America at the time.  There are those who feel we are in our greatest peril since then, perhaps greater.  Reading these words reminds us that we as a people have been where we are before and we have survived because reporters such as Murrow (and we still have some today although we are also bombarded by many on the other side) refused to back away or had no fear in confrontations with demagogues. The story of a free nation seems to be cyclical, which is one reason to study unvarnished history.

His most famous broadcast was “See it Now” on March 9, 1954 when he used McCarthy’s own words to condemn him, concluding:

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.

“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it–and rather successfully. Cassius was right. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

David Strathairn recreated those remarks with great effectiveness in the movie.

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I invite you, especially if you are a reporter today or a young person wanting to be a reporter in this rapidly changing world of journalism, to watch this 1975 program about Murrow, produced by the BBC.

:Bing Videos

And I invite you to read this column from constitutional lawyer John Whitehead, written in 2005 when the movie came out. It seems appropriate now:

The Rutherford Institute :: Edward R. Murrow: “We will not walk in fear, one of another.” |

I close with Murrow’s words that are a challenge to all of us when there are those who believe they can seize power because they can intimidate a nation.

“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.”

 Murrow reaches out to us seventy years after that broadcast. All we have to do is remove “Senator McCarthy” and fill in another name and we will understand the challenge we as citizens must not avoid meeting.

One of Murrow’s journalism descendents, Dan Rather, used to close his broadcasts with the word, “Courage.”

May all of us, we who are not descended from fearful men and women, find it in 2024.

 

The Governor and the Book

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I see that Governor Parson has written a book.  It will be released next March but some excerpts have been made available to the press.  He calls it No Turnin’ Back.

I look forward to buying one.  Maybe he’ll have a signing at Downtown Book & Toy. I’ll be near the front of the line, I hope.  Ernie and Hazel, the bookstore cats, probably will have to be locked away because the line is likely to stretch a good distance down High Street.

It’s going to be a historic book because Mike Parson has been a central figure during some major points of history.  He came into statewide office as Lt. Governor, set to fill the role as Senate President and preside over the chamber in which he had just served eight years, while Eric Greitens careened throughout the capitol as a governor who antagonized most of the people he needed to make into allies.

Then came the historic day when Greitens announced his resignation as governor, getting out of town before he could be run out of town.  Suddenly Mike Parson—who was tending to his cattle on his southwest Missouri farm that day—became THE top guy in state government.

Then Covid hit. And for stress-laden month after month, Parson had to steer the state through shortages, uncertainties, and deaths.

We haven’t asked him but we have asked several former governors about the toughest decisions they had to make.  The most frequent answer has been that it was the decision to allow an execution to go ahead.

No governor serves without making mistakes. Some are mistakes they know pretty quickly they made. Others will emerge with the passage of time that places conduct within context. We don’t have much doubt that Governor Paron will recognize what he could have done differently or done better.  But at the time, somebody had to do something, and once done there is no turning back, which is why the title is appropriate.

I wish more governors had done what he is doing. History will paint its own picture. But self-portraits have value, too.

Jim Spainhower, who was a former State Representative and later a two-term State Treasurer and a 1980 primary election challenger to Joe Teasdale, was also a minister of my denomination, the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ.  He wrote a book called Pulpit, Pew, and Politics.

He told me when my first book was published, “Now you can start your prayers by saying ‘Oh though who also hast written a book.’”

Mike Parson is a man of faith, as you will hear if you click on the two-parts of an interview Ashley Byrd of the Missourinet did with him.  He, too, will soon be able to begin his prayers with those words.

Maybe we’ll greet each other at the book-signing with those words.

He talks with the Missourinet’s Ashley Byrd about the book and about his life and his governorship on these links:

Gov. Parson writes autobiography, but not to prepare a run for another office (LISTEN TO INTERVIEW PT. 1) – Missourinet

Gov. Parson: This office is not about yourself, it’s a much higher calling than your last name (LISTEN – PT 2 INTERVIEW) – Missourinet

(We thank our friends at The Missourinet for the photo.)